The rhetorical function of law for the boundaries of tolerance

Abstract

Thinking of the discussions about the legal effects of the Brazilian Amnesty Law, the thesis in this paper is that positive law has to coercively assure the basic environment for the development of tolerance. So it has to stay completely apart from religion, politics, money etc., and it cannot privilege any sort of moral view, which would be in itself valid. The price to pay is the formalization, that is: the task of law is to guarantee an arena, a public space of procedural rules in which the different ideologies towards how the world ought to be can confront each other to gain the minds and opinions of the people. On the way to the thesis, I will first show how the sophistical movement turned into a rhetorical philosophy through the incorporation of the ideas of historicism, humanism and skepticism. In the second place, there will come an historical analysis of the idea of tolerance, nearly as old as culture itself. Then, in the same line, I will try to show more specifically how this evolution led to modern rhetoric, in order to, finally, situate the paradox of tolerance and how law could be able to deal with it and overcome the ethical burden that the modern democratic world has brought to it